Seriously Misunderstanding Hjelmslev On The Meaning Of 'Sign'

Martin (2013: 4):

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This is misleading because it seriously misunderstands Hjelmslev. The quote provided by Martin is part of an argument against the traditional view of the sign, where a sign is a sign for something outside itself: content-substance and expression substance. Hjelmslev (1961: 57-8)

If we now return to the question from which we began, concerning the most appropriate meaning of the word sign, we are in a position to see more clearly behind the controversy between the traditional and the modern linguistic points of view. It seems to be true that a sign is a sign for something, and that this something in a certain sense lies outside the sign itself. Thus the word ring is a sign for that definite thing on my finger, and that thing does not, in a certain (traditional) sense, enter into the sign itself. But that thing on my finger is an entity of content-substance, which, through the sign, is ordered to a content-form and is arranged under it together with various other entities of content-substance (e.g., the sound that comes from my telephone). That a sign is a sign for something means that the content-form of a sign can subsume that something as content-substance. 

Just as we felt before a need to use the word purport, not simply of the content, but also of the expression, so here again, in the interest of clarity, despite the time-honoured concepts whose shortcomings now become increasingly evident, we feel a desire to invert the sign-orientation: actually we should be able to say with precisely the same right that a sign is a sign for an expression-substance. The sound sequence [riᶇ] itself, as a unique phenomenon, pronounced hic et nunc, is an entity of expression-substance …

The sign is, then — paradoxical as it may seem — a sign for a content-substance and a sign for an expression-substance. It is in this sense that the sign can be said to be a sign for something. On the other hand, we see no justification for calling the sign a sign merely for the content-substance, or (what nobody has thought of, to be sure) merely for the expression-substance.

Hjelmslev (1961: 58) then supports Saussure's use of the word sign, interpreting signified and signifier as content form and expression form, respectively:

But it appears more appropriate to use the word sign as the name for the unit consisting of content-form and expression-form and established by the solidarity that we have called the sign function.

and argues (ibid.) that the traditional view of the sign gives rise to the view that Saussure argued against:

If sign is used as the name for the expression [signifier] alone or for a part of it, the terminology, even if protected by formal definitions, will run the risk of consciously or unconsciously giving rise to or favouring the widespread misconception according to which a language is simply a nomenclature or a stock of labels intended to be fastened on pre-existent things. The word sign will always, by reason of its nature, be joined to the idea of a designatum; the word sign must therefore be used appropriately in such a way that the relation between sign and designatum will appear as clearly as possible and not be subjected to distorting simplification.

In summary, Martin has not only misunderstood Hjelmslev to mean the opposite of what he wrote, but also supported the view that Saussure explicitly rejects, thereby contradicting his earlier claim of sharing Saussure's rejection of it. Martin (2013: 3):

This dual labelling means that we don't deploy terms that privilege either signifié of signifiant and so foster the misunderstanding of Saussure reviewed above (i.e. the idea that signs stand for concepts, or that signs are names for parts of the physical and biological world).